Right time to upgrade?

Technology and Gaming Help and Support
#1

Dear black mesa forum sages,
I write to you for aid to an internal struggle I’ve been having lately. My video card is mere weeks of crapping out on me so I’ve been wrestling with the idea of upgrading my PC. The idea is I want a PC that will play Watch Dogs flawlessly and last me just about the entire new gen we’re in.

One of my buds is saying wait another year for DDR4 to come out before upgrading. Which is making think of buying a ps4 which has pros such as access to games like mgs5, anything that Naughty dog plans to make etc… (Last of us was godly btw). Will also run Watch Dogs smoothly.

Would DDR4 really make that big of a difference for the upcoming gen of gaming? This is all about maximizing the value of the upgrade really. Money is not so much an issue but I don’t want to do both.
What do you think, is the time ripe to upgrade a PC or WAIT on the upgrade AND buy a ps4? Thx.

FYI: My current build is
mobo: M4A77T/USB3
graphx: XFX RADEON HD6870 2GB (nearly decommissioned)
cpu: AMD PHENOM II X4 955 3.20GHZ
ram: DDR3 8GB.

#2

I can’t imagine that DDR4 RAM would make too much of a difference in performance. I would say wait until the 800 series comes out and see how they compare to AMD’s offerings but if your GPU is actually about to die there’s nothing much you can do on that front. I don’t know much about AMD CPUs but if you want to stick with AMD GPU you’ll probably want one of the R9 cards, maybe an R9 270 or something, though I’d look up benchmarks for cards at and above Watch Dogs’ recommendations.

#3

SSD > GPU > Processor > Memory

#4

If you’re uncertain about upgrading to an extreme, build a mediocre pc for a fraction of the cost and buy super expensive parts later.

#5

As mentioned, RAM isn’t really a bottleneck at the moment with regards to gaming. You are better off spending more money on a better GPU and CPU, and definitely get an SSD. An SSD remarkably speeds up the whole system overall, but not necessarily in-game, other than load times. If you are going to be waiting for anything, wait for the Nvidia 800 series GPUs to come out, that way you can be future-proof for a little while.

#6

The 6870 is still a decent card but if it’s failing you then a card in the 150$ range would do decently in current games. For next-gen something like a 7950 or GTX 760 is more than enough.

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